As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Many information handling systems use keyboards to obtain user input. Some prior keyboard solutions have provided pressure sensitive keys. The most common technique to provide pressure sensitive keys is to use variable resistance sensing techniques to provide an indication of the pressure applied by a user to a key. Variable capacitance sensing has also been utilized in some prior art products such as console gamepad controllers.
Computer games are examples of applications that are run on information handling systems in conjunction with gaming control centers such as the Alienware Command Center (AWCC) available from Dell Computer of Round Rock, Tex. Such gaming control centers include separate user-accessible applications that are often provided on an information handling system to monitor direct launching of game applications, and to allow a user to associate specific system user-defined system configurations and actions with a particular directly-launched game. Once the user selects a game to create a new game mode, a profile configurator is provided as a software component of a gaming control center that is responsible for saving the game configuration settings and actions that will be associated with the game/application. Examples of specific user-defined system configurations that may be saved and linked to a particular game include specific keyboard and mouse lighting settings, audio output settings, power management settings, performance monitoring recording settings, designated keyboard macros and/or variable pressure key settings and/or macros, etc. Every time a particular game is directly launched by the user, a component in the gaming control center recognizes that the game has been directly-launched and responds by applying the specific user-defined system configurations to the corresponding system components for as long as the game remains active and running. The gaming control center recognizes when the particular directly-launched game is closed and responds by reverting to the default (non-game) system configurations.